Buy Real Estate, Get Visa?

The Federal Government is desperate to improve the situation of joblessness and a tanked real estate market… but what can they do about it? Doesn’t the market have to simply run its course? Don’t prices simply have to drop? Don’t investors need to snap up as many properties as they can to rebuild neighborhoods? Doesn’t the average American need to buy when they have a job again? There is a new proposal on the table – a Bipartisan Bill that would allow foreigners who spend $500,000+ on US real estate to obtain Visas to live in the United States.

Advocates of the plan say it could really boost the California market, which is attractive to Chinese real estate buyers. Nationwide, sales to foreigners and new immigrants reached $82 billion, up from $66 billion last year, said the National Association of Realtors. Florida and California led these real estate transactions, but Colorado, New York, Hawaii, and Texas will also see huge increases in demand. Sandra Miller, a Santa Monica realtor, said 10 percent of the luxury market is comprised of foreign investors, but offering them US visas to live here could easily triple that figure.

It’s the Government’s hope that these international tourists would take advantage of another offer once here – to get on the fast track for a green card if they invest at least $500,000 in an American business that creates at least 10 jobs.

According to New York Senator Chuck Schumer who introduced the legislation, “Many people want to come and live in the United States. They will be here spending money and paying taxes, and the most important thing is they'll sop up the extra supply of homes we have right now compared to demand, and that's what's dragging our economy down."

What do you think? Will this help our real estate market and unemployment rates?

To check out what is happening in the Bethesa real estate market, make sure to visit http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com/

Video - Brief Analysis Of Bethesda MD Real Estate Market

Bethesda luxury real estate

Bethesda Real Estate - October Analysis

Over at www.DCRealEstateMarketplace.com, we just wrote a short article about how luxury homes for sale in Bethesda MD were faring when compared to the overall market, but ran out of room before sharing just one more graph.

This graph shows the Median Action Index, which is a compilation stat assembled by Altos Research out of California for most major metro areas, and which purports to show whether or not a market is in a Buyer's or Seller's market, and how strongly.

A score of 30 on this graph would indicate a neutral market, with anythig below 30 belonging to a Buyer's market.  Clearly, that's where Bethesda is, with the most expensive group of homes, shown in black, even further in a Buyer's market than the overall pool of available properties.

Fallsgrove MD Homes For Sale - Rockville MD - Inventory Levels

Over at http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com, a new blog post was written this week about the Fallsgrove and Rockville MD markets with just a short analysis.  If you want to read the article, you can just skip on over to http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com/fallsgrove-md-homes-for-sale-market-update

But if you want to read about one other aspect of the community, feel free to hang out here for another few seconds.  The graph above follows the number of homes for sale in the Rockville MD community, of which Fallsgrove is just one small piece.  Over the past two years, we have seen a few ups and downs, but most of it seems to have washed out with our current levels almost exactly where they were in September of 2009.

Back then, there were almost 300 homes actively trying to find a buyer.  That number fell through most of 2010, but early this year, that number started climbing again, and now we are right back at 300 units on the market.

Avenel MD Homes For Sale - Video Market Update

Avenel MD Homes For Sale

Potomac MD Homes - Real Estate Market Update - September 2011

Yesterday, I wrote an article on our blog at http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com/avenel-homes-for-sale-market-update discussing the state of the Avenel MD homes for sale market, as how it relates to the greater Potomac MD real estate market.

As always, I ended up with too many graphs to shove into one single blog post, so I have come here to share the extra chart. This one is about the DOM, or Days On Market, of homes in Potomac MD, of which Avenel is one sub-group.

Even though median asking prices are dropping, over $200,000 in the past two years and inventory levels are pretty high, it appears that homes are staying on the market about the same amount of time today as they were in September of 2009.  Which I find surprising.  I certainly would have expected homes to be on the market longer than before.

What this tells me is that the good homes, the homes people are willing to buy, are probably on the market for only a short amount of time.  And the other homes, well, they are staying on for a long time before the sellers get tired and then simply take their home off the market without a contract.

Bethesda Real Estate - video - market update for September 2011

Bethesda real estate